Rockford Fosgate Power T162S

A two-way component speaker system with separate tweeter units, midbass drivers and passive crossovers. Complete with a mounting kit to fit the tweeters in more than one application and screws and Allen headed fixings. Uniquely in twenty pairs of posh compos, these also came with a small cast power driver bit to use in installation of the product. This set is purely aimed at the top end in the Rockford ‘Power’ series. The grilles alone are heavy dual-steel-bar things with a serious weight to them.
The midbass drivers are heavy duty and are furnished with a dished in Aluminium cone as well as having passives that offer different slopes for highpass and lowpass although they both work from the same frequency point. These passives could be mounted competition style on a Plexiglas baffle as they have smoked plastic bases you can see the quality innards through as well as having branded chromed cases that look good too, so they might want to be displayed feature style from both sides.
– Power Handling 100w RMS
– Sensitivity 89dB 1w/1M
– Own Pink noise test figure 113.9dB (Vol @20 @ trk 9 dB Drag Vol III)
– Passband 50Hz to 22kHz
– Tweeter diameter 28mm
– Tweeter Mounting Depth 29mm
– Midbass Mounting Depth 68mm
– Cone: Hard anodised parabolic Aluminium
– Tweeter: Inverted Titanium dome with Neodymium magnet
– Crossover slope & point: 24dB per octave HPF & 12dB per octave LPF @ 3.2kHz (Butterworth)
– Chassis: cast Aluminium basket
– Complete with: wire, Allen headed fixings and a power driver bit for them
– Neodymium magnet to midbass
Review by Adam Rayner
Much to the utter delight of the new Rockford UK distributors they sell more of these top end components than they do the cheaper ones. This is because they can be so very many things to different people. They are a pure brand-o-phile delight from the packaging to their wicked trendy grilles. They can do SQ, they can rock, they lead the trend in looks. Rockford deliver the whole shebang. The passives are not just pretty but contain some high power inductors and well matched capacitors. They are very rare in the group to offer a different crossover slope for highpass versus lowpass.
The midbass drivers’ inverted metal cones are effective and rigid pistons and produce a high quality sound. I didn’t run them bi-amplified or bi-wired but they did get the same heavy wattage from the bridged iPaul amp used in the test.
There are jumpers inside the passives for the attenuation of the highs as you choose and the output is pure American high end. Real definition, potency and er, Power! A ballsy presentation and another one for the front of a mad end system if you wished but this time with the ability to impress at more sensible listening levels, too. The tweeters are just a bit special and again reach up into the bat frequencies to make edges of strings and mouth sounds all the better and clearer. Despite a fairly high price tag, these are being sold at better margins for the end user than ever before and the Dollar is in such a state that UK distributors’ costs are lower. This makes even a nearly three hundred quid set of speakers pretty hot VFM as they are heavy duty items that if you attempt to brutalise them will just sing to you.
Overall 9.2
Sound Quality 9
Build Quality 10
Power Handling 10
Efficiency 8
Value For Money 9